


A Good Lie is Better than the Truth

by Corycides



Category: Revolution (TV)
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-26
Updated: 2015-09-26
Packaged: 2018-04-22 17:02:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4843352
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Corycides/pseuds/Corycides
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the death of the first - and last - Electric City, Charlie settled back home in Willoughby to bury her uncle and raise her...</p><p>Wait, that's not right, is it? She'd never do that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Good Lie is Better than the Truth

**Author's Note:**

> I am currently away from my home computer and I have EXTREMELY sporadic Internet. I will divide this into proper chapters once I get back home. Sorry all!
> 
> No matter how brutal life becomes, peace always reigns in the cemetery.  Miles/Charlie/Bass

Chapter One

 

It wasn't any one thing. Charlie sat on top of the Ferris wheel, wooden seat warm against her backside and feet dangling, and picked a flower apart absent-mindedly. White, sweet smelling petals drifted down through the muggy hot air like a sweet rain. They caught on the weathered cross at the base of the wheel, white against the aged grey wood.

Next to her Danny hung over the safety bar, all salt-white hair and skinny, brown limbs. He had broken his finger a few months ago, it hadn't healed entirely straight. Now it stuck out, just a bit, from its fellows and there was a bump around the knuckle.

'Charlie?' He poked at her. 'You were going to tell me about Dad.'

She was. With a sigh she straightened up and brushed her hands off, shedding scraps of green and white. Her fingernails were rimed with green sap.

‘I’ve been thinking, and the most unbelievable part of this is that Miles could have lived in Sylvania Estates for 11 years without turning it into a secure fortification. Or killing everyone.’ Danny blinked at her, mouth open to object, but Charlie kept talking. There had been too many opinionated assholes in her life, if she’d not learned to talk over them she’d have never had her say. ‘I mean, the idea that Monroe would just give up on Miles and ride off into the sunset is a close second. Had you paid any attention to the man? He always doubles down on Miles. After losing Connor, we should have woken up to him trying to skin Miles so he could wear him like a hairy man-suit. Oh, and white roses don’t have a scent.’

Danny slouched back in his chair, pouting like he really was the kid he looked like. ‘That’s not fair. In your head they do.’

‘I saw them in an old magazine,’ Charlie said. ‘They looked like they should smell sweet, but they don’t.’

The lingering scent of torn petals faded away, disappearing like a ghost.

‘None of this is real is it?’ she asked.

The ferris wheel shuddered, jolted and creaked into motion. The seat they were in rocked back and forth, creaking loudly. The mechanism clicked and whirred, straining like the weight and the rust mattered. Charlie grabbed the handle, fingers digging into the old wood, and sucked in a startled breath. The rotation took them up, laying out the landscape around them like a canvas. Fields of wheat, swathes of green and scattered townships.

She’d always thought she’d have been able to see Madison from up here. The thought flickered through her head, and suddenly she could see broken skyscrapers and the burn-scarred capitol building. Not real at all.

‘We thought you’d be happy here.’

Charlie glanced at....easiest to keep thinking of him as ‘Danny’. ‘Why? All I ever wanted was to get away from here. My ideal world is not an eternity of raking cow shit into corn fields.’

‘We gave you your life back,’ Danny pointed out. ‘Your home, your father, your brother. As if the militia had never found you. These are good memories for you.’

Charlie bent her head, her hair falling over her face. She stared at her hands, still scarred like a swordswoman despite what was supposed to have been years farming. ‘You can never go home again, again. These are good memories, but they’re ghosts. They aren’t my future, not the one I wanted.’

When she looked up, the world was picking itself apart around her. The fields of wheat and the great lake unstitched itself like an old tapestry, spooling out into the emptiness. At the end, all that was left was the ferris wheel turning in a sparkling void.

‘What future do you want? We can give it to you.’

‘I don’t want it given to me, I want to find it myself. I want to make it for myself.’

‘We don’t understand.’

‘You would if you were human.’

‘We were human. We experienced the physicality of your existence through Priscilla. It was...intriguing.’

Priscilla’s death was an old regret, faded and never that sharp, but Aaron… That still hurt. He’d been the last person who’d known who she was before. ‘Are they here?’ She waved a hand at the endless space around them. ‘Out there, somewhere.’

When Danny leaned forwards, he was Danny again. Hair that needed cut flopped over an open, handsome face, blood slowly soaking through his white shirt. It hadn’t been slow, Charlie remembered how fast the blood had just emptied out of him. It hadn’t seemed possible.

‘There is no out there,’ Danny said. ‘We are, if anything, in here. If you want, we can create Priscilla and Aaron in every detail. Every thought or misfiring synapse, right down to an allergy to bees. All they were is contained here, and we can recreate them.’

Charlie ignored the offer. She was pretty sure that she wasn’t capable of explaining why that wasn’t the same to a nanite, they didn’t seem the type to accept ‘it just isn’t’ as a reason.

‘So in the real world-’

‘By what definition is this world any less real? Do you-’

‘Shut up,’ Charlie said. ‘You know what I mean, don’t be a dick.’

There was a slightly offended pause. ‘If you define the physical world as being somehow more real than the world of thought, then you are correct. The meat that housed them is gone, but-’

Charlie held her hands out. ‘And me? Am I just a puppet of nanite thoughts?’

‘You are not a puppet. You remain alive in the physical world, your body has been cared for.’

‘And the others? Are they in their little ideal bubble-worlds?’

‘They are contained in independent pyschescapes designed to engage and appeal to their most dominant personality traits.’ Danny spread his hands. He even had the scar on his thumb where he’d cut it in the stream, trying to catch crayfish. ‘It was necessary to carry out more editing on their perception of reality and stored interpretation of events.’

It was like talking to Rachel. There were definitely words in there, even words that you recognised. Like ‘on’ or ‘of’. Everything else might as well have been Russian.

‘In words that I might know?’

It actually took a second. What she perceived as a second anyhow. ‘Your mind is surprising clean, Charlie. There are no causal fractal points.’ Her blank expression made Danny sigh. ‘People create uchronia in their minds, worlds that did not happen, but could have happened. A door not taken, an accident avoided-

‘You mean, alternate worlds? Like when Rose Tyler stopped her Dad from dying?’

‘Uchronia is a more elegant way to form the thought, but I suppose a British SF show also explored the idea. Essentially. You have...few. The others had many. Their psychescapes are less tied to reality than yours, more encapsulated.’

Charlie opened her mouth to tell Danny to wake them up, except this wasn’t Danny. It was a shape the nanites were wearing. That was all, even if it was hard to remember.

‘Are we prisoners, then?’ she asked.

‘No. If you wish to leave us, we won’t keep you here. Although any world you want, is yours, Charlie. You can be Rose Tyler, you can take over the Republic. Anything.’

‘I want to wake up,’ Charlie said. ‘I want us all to wake up.’

‘If you wish to leave,’ Danny said again. ‘The others must make that decision on their own. Their pyschescapes are crafted from their subconscious, self-supporting. Unless they realise it’s false, destroying their psychescapes would also destroy them.’

‘So what can I do?’

‘Let sleeping generals lie?’

She shook her head. ‘No.’

Danny leaned forward and rested his elbows on the handle, his folded hands under his chin. Blood oozed down his thighs, soaking in. ‘Introduction of an anachronistic element in the pyschescape did cause Father to de-integrate from the constructed reality.’

‘What’s an anachronistic element?’

Danny looked at her. ‘You.’

The Ferris wheel collapsed under her, the substance of it sucked away into the void, and Charlie fell.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


Chapter Two

He tipped the bottle upside down, twisting it to drain all the dregs of the whiskey into the glass. Once it was empty, he tossed the bottle away. It landed on the smooth green grass and rolled, clinking to a stop against a gravestone.

Jill Dale. Well, Miles hoped she enjoyed the dregs. It was the good stuff.

Lifting the glass, he toasted the rows of graves. ‘Happy birthday,’ he said. ‘You stupid fucker.’

He tossed the whiskey back, not bothering to savour the smoke and salt peak burn of it. What he wanted was what came after you’d finished the bottle, the blissful not giving a fuck of being so goddamn drunk it was an effective anaesthetic.

Most of the year he just walked the pain off. He went to war zones, he sent child support, or the military did, he posted obligatory Christmas cards to his brother and his wife, every few years - between deployments - he’d meet his sister-in-law and bang her, until she had to run to a PTA meeting or a hair appointment. There was a girlfriend. There was a house, not that he’d ever actually got round to unpacking his shit.

It was a life. Except it felt like a hole he was throwing stuff into, like enough fuck-ups would fill it up. Twice a year, he just said fuck it and poured whiskey in instead.

Once for the date on Bass’ gravestone. Once for… He didn’t know, just that the phantom emptiness on that date ached like an amputated limb.

Nora said he should stop punishing himself, that it was grief and guilt. Except it wasn’t. It was the body memory of someone at his back, just behind his shoulder. Real enough that it was a shock to turn around and not see anyone. Or worse, when it was Nora and his stomach dropped into his fucking boots.

Beautiful, smart women who was just dumb enough to love the shit out of an old marine, and sometimes all he felt was … let down.

‘What happened?’ a voice asked.

He near shit himself. Pissed to the gills or not, he usually didn’t let people walk up behind him. He shoved himself to his feet, staggered over his own boots, and the pretty, leggy blonde caught him. Poor kid obviously had a drunk relative, because she got under his arm and propped him up with the ease of someone who’d done it before.

Or, at least, propped him up as much as someone that short could prop up a six foot and change drunk.

‘What the fuck are you doing here?’ he asked.

‘I was passing,’ she said. ‘I saw you out here. What happened.’

He glanced at the gravestone - lined up neatly next to his parents and sisters. It still hurt, it still made him want to dig the selfish little fucker up to kick his corpse’s ass. What the fuck had he been thinking?

‘Harry Potter killed him,’ he said.

The girl frowned up at him. ‘Who?’

‘No...the book? JK...fuck it, I don’t care.’ He rubbed his forehead and weaned himself off the support of her shoulder. ‘It was an accident. He got shot. Accidentally.’

He’d said it often. One of these days he’d believe it. One of these days he’d forget that his best friend had killed himself - drunk and alone - with only the dead for company, because Miles had been fucking his brother’s wife.

The girl crouched down and touched the headstone, fingers outlining the lettering with an odd sort of tenderness. Her index caught in the date and she glanced along the other graves, doing the very short sums involved.

‘Idiot,’ she said.

‘Yeah, I’ve said that,’ Miles muttered. ‘But I was his best friend, so I have the right.’

‘What makes you think I meant him?’ She hopped to her feet with the ease of young bones and un-fucked knees. ‘C’mon. You can’t stay here all night.’

He grunted. ‘Last year begs to differ.’

She stuck her hands into the back pocket of her jeans, all cocked hip and rolled back shoulders. Her t-shirt was too short, baring a slice of skin and the knobs of her hip-bones. He tried not to notice - she was younger than his kid - but apparently self-control was the first thing to drown.

‘You’ve run out of drink,’ she pointed out. ‘And it’s not even midnight.’

He looked around. She had a point, old Jill had drunk the last of his whiskey and it was going to be a long night. They always were.

‘You trying to get me drunk?’ he asked, raising his eyebrows.

She cocked her to the side and grinned. Fuck. It went through him a bullet that grin, punching through any plans he might have had to try - just this once - to be a good man. ‘Bit late for that,’ she said. ‘Keep you drunk maybe.’

He shook his head, shoving his hand through his hair. ‘Are you even old enough to drink?’

She just rolled her eyes at him instead of answering. ‘You coming or not.’

His balls ached like that was some sort of promise. ‘Yeah. What the hell.’ He glanced at Bass’ grave, feeling obscurely guilty like he was cock-blocking his friend’s ghost. Stupid. Bass had never really gone for blondes. It was redheads he had a weakness for.  ‘There’s a bar that ain’t far. It’s got piss poor whiskey. What’s your name anyhow.

‘Charlie,’ she said.

One hand touched Bass’ grave briefly, fingertips pressed against the granite, then she led the way out of the graveyard. Miles hung back and watched the sway of her ass in the skin tight jeans. He was going to hell, but what the hell - he’d already known that.

‘My niece is called Charlie,’ he said.

‘Good pick up line,’ she tossed over her shoulder. ‘You should lead with that in future. And you’re too drunk to watch my ass instead of your feet.’

He snorted. ‘Never too drunk to watch a pretty girl’s ass.’

She laughed. The sound was too joyful for the sombre surroundings, but fuck ‘em. The corpses were dead, and that soft chuckle...satisfied...Miles. It felt like making her laugh was something he liked doing.

Maudlin, drunk, and with a damp ass - what a catch. Of course, she was picking up drunks in a graveyard so she was probably a serial killer. He’d wake up in the morning with a grin on his face and be down a kidney. Fair trade - way he’d treated the things over the years, the joke was on whoever ended up with one.

His car was parked crookedly in the car park, blood red in the moonlight. Charlie made an admiring sound, running her fingers along the metalwork.

‘You wanna skip the bar?’ Miles asked. ‘I got booze at my place.’

Charlie turned around and leaned back against the car, crossing her arms. She twisted her mouth to the side, looking rueful.

‘You’d regret that when you woke up,’ she said.

Miles shook his head. ‘No, Charlie, I wouldn’t.’

She looked down, hair falling over her face. ‘You’re wrong.’

He walked over to her and ran his fingers through her hair, pushing it back for her face. It slid like silk through his fingers, catching in the calluses on his palm. ‘Betcha I wouldn’t.’

It was stupid, he was actually going to wake up missing organs, and he didn’t care. Wrapping her hair around his hand, tugging her head back, he leaned in to kiss her. Her lips were soft, but not enough. She wasn’t kissing him back, and he thought for a second she was going to push him away. He’d have to get her to wherever she was staying, then go find a cold hammer to hit his cock with.

Then she sighed, her breath warm against his mouth, and stood on her tiptoes to kiss him back. Her hand twisted in his shirt.

‘Miles,’ she said into his mouth. ‘Bad idea.’

He did know she shouldn’t know his name, the wrongness of it crawling on sharp little bug feet through his brain, but he didn’t care. This felt right, it felt necessary.

‘That’s ok,’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t know what to do with a good one.’

He fumbled the car door open and they scrambled gracelessly into the kiss-and-a-promise backseat, unwilling to stop kissing or touching each other for long enough to make it easier. Miles yanked her teasing-small blue t-shirt up over her head, Charlie twisting her arms in awkward angles over her head to escape the sleeves. Her knuckles bumped the window as she squirmed out of her bra next, lifting her bare breasts towards his mouth like a gift.

Miles dipped his head and kissed them, lips and tongue attentive to the tight plumpness of her nipple. Her skin tasted like sweat and lavender, tart and sweet in his mouth. Charlie swore raggedly and arched up, one hand digging into his hair to hold his head in place. Her free hand was shoved down between their bodies, fumbling impatiently at her jeans.

‘This wasn’t the plan,’ she muttered, hitching up her hips and working denim down over narrow hips. ‘Later on, I want you to remember that.’

Miles lifted himself off her, elbow propped against the leather seat, long enough to unbutton his jeans and shove them down. He grabbed his cock, fingers tight enough to pinch, and jacked his hand along it in two fast, rough strokes. Come slicked under his fingers, spreading in a film over the shaft.

‘I’ll make a note,’ he rasped. ‘Bad idea, not your fault.’

He shifted, getting his knee in the right place - because this wasn’t the first time he’d fucked somebody in the underfed backseat - and hesitated. His cock was between her thighs, pre-come sticking to the short, fine curls there, and twitching a resentful ache back into his thighs for the delay.

‘You sure this is what you want?’

Charlie lifted her hips, his cock sliding against the wet folds of her pussy. ‘Yes. Now fuck me. Please?’

‘Well, when you ask so nice.’

He slid into her, kissing the slow hiss off her lips as his cock stretched her tight around it. Long fingers dug into his shoulders, nails piercing the skin, as she bit her lips.  Miles licked her collarbone, then wrapped his mouth around the bony angle. He sucked a bruise into the skin like he was still some stupid teenager.

‘You ok.’

She smirked at him. ‘It’s a dick, Miles. Don’t get full of yourself.’

He had a lot of good intentions, but he was fucking a girl who was way too young in the back seat of his car. Charlie wasn’t particularly interested in his intentions, wriggling under him until he had to either fuck her or just give up and come. She had to brace her hands against the door behind her as he thrust into her. Her body flexed and tightened around him, feeling familiar and new at the same time. Soft, eager noises escaped her as she arched up him, meeting his thrusts with her hips. She had the lush curve of her lower lip folded between her teeth, and her eyes open and focused on him like he was only thing in the world.

It was that that pushed him over the edge. The tight heat of her around him, wet and slick and welcoming, was better than anything he’d ever felt, but it was her staring at him that twisted his orgasm out of him with a raw, too loud noise. For a second - not even that, for a single flash of weird memory - he remembered doing this before, only it had been a tree he’d pinned her again and… Gone.

Miles sprawled on top of her for a second, heavy sprawl pinning her to the sweaty leather. It’s going to need detailed, and that was a sign he was getting old - worrying about wiping down leather when a beautiful, sweaty girl is under him.

He sat back, cock slipping out of her. Her hand slid down, fingers curling as she cupped herself. Miles caught her wrist and moved it, lifting it to kiss the skin of her wrist.

‘I’m a selfish shit, but I’m not that bad.’

He slid back, knees in the door, and kissed his way down her stomach. Long muscles twitched under his mouth, her breath fast and shaking. He thought he could get her off without touching her pussy, but...later.

His mouth on her made her gasp and spread her thighs, opening her up to his lips and tongue. His brain twisted around the certainty he’d done this before, that she’d dig her fingers into his hair if he fucked his tongue into her, that she’d scream if he sucked on her clit. Like he’d done it before. She tasted of sex and him. His teeth plucked at the tight knot of nerves and tender skin, making her swear in a ragged, cracking voice and buck up hard into his mouth.

Miles snorted a laugh and slung his arm over her stomach, pressing her back down into the seat. Her stomach tensed and fluttered under his hand, his fingers spread from her hip to her belly button. When she came, thighs clenching around his skull, it was his name that she screamed.

He was so smug about that, he didn’t register the other voice in the dark. Not until Nora grabbed him by his slouching jeans, and dragged him out of the car.

‘You son of a bitch!’ she cursed him, whacking him around the side of the head with a closed fist. ‘You fucker. What the hell are you doing?’

He ducked away from her, yanking his jeans up with one hand. ‘Nora. I...’

The words dried up. What was he going to say? That it wasn’t what it looked like? It was. That he was sorry? He wasn’t, sad but not sorry. Five years he’d been with Nora, and he was happy to throw it away for a fast screw with a blonde kid half his age? Half his age if he lied about it.

‘I didn’t plan this.’

She punched his shoulder, driving him back a step. ‘What are you trying to tell me? That she’s one of those girls you just find hanging out around the graves? Just some graveside pickup? I was worried about you. I thought you...’

Her voice cracked, anger splitting in half to flash the pain. Miles prefered the anger. He tugged his jeans, fastening them.

‘I wouldn’t have planned to do this to you.’

‘But you did.’

‘Nora.’

She turned her back on him and two three long steps away, boots scuffing on the tarmac.

‘OK. OK,’ she said. ‘I’m not doing this here. You come home with me now, Miles. Come home and we’ll forget about this.’

Charlie had hopped out of the car, her jeans up and her t-shirt twisted in her hands. He looked at her and then away, stepping towards Nora. That felt familiar too, a low ache of shame in his gut.

‘Miles,’ Charlie said. ‘You can’t make this right. It’s too late. Years too late. Remember?’

No. Charlie stepped up next to him and put her hand on his shoulder, resting her cheek against his arm. it felt like a phantom turned solid, the emptiness he’d always turned to check now filled. ‘None of this is real, Miles. I’m sorry.’

It wasn’t like remembering, it was like waking up. Reality shrugged its way back into his mind, what had seemed like a life collapsing like a hollowed out wasp nest. The graveyard stayed; Nora faded away. Just another ghost.

‘Charlie,’ he said. ‘What did you do?’

She turned her face into his arm, rubbing her cheek against his bicep. Then she stepped away from him, the muscles in her back flexing as she pulled her shirt back on. Slim fingers pulled her hair out of the collar, shaking it loose down her back.

‘Won a bet?’ she said.

Miles clenched his teeth and grabbed her arm, pulling her back towards him. ‘Don’t be flip, Charlie. This was… I’m your...um...your-’

Charlie jerked her arm out of his grip. ‘Don’t tie yourself in a knot, Miles,’ she said. ‘None of this is real, so you didn’t actually fuck your….um….whatever. Besides, not like it was the first time.’

He shied away from that, and Charlie. That was a fact he’d not been dealing with for a couple of years now. He stalked across the carpark, scrubbing his hands through his hair.

‘I thought Bass was dead, that I’d not got here in time,’ he said. ‘He was gone, and you were in University in Nevada. I’d never met you.’

‘Sorry to spoil it for you.’

He heard his car groan and turned around. Charlie was sitting on the hood, feet braced against the bumper. Instinct made him start to growl protectively, but he supposed that the car wasn’t real either.

‘Don’t,’ he said. ‘This...isn’t easy, but you’re the best thing in my life, kid. That’s why I want to keep you clean.’

‘You’re not dirty, Miles.’

‘This is,’ he said. ‘You...you’re my kid.’

It was the first time he’d said that out loud, and he could still taste her sex and his come on his tongue. He should have been disgusted with himself, sick to his stomach, but it was just a shadowy twist of regret. Maybe he’d just done so many sinful things, he’d run out of shame. If he had anything to do with it, though, Charlie wouldn’t have such a weight to carry around.

‘I’m my Dad’s kid,’ Charlie said. ‘He raised me. I don’t care what Mom pulled out of her ass at the last minute.’

‘Even if that’s true, I’m still your uncle.’

Charlie started to say something, then sighed instead. She waved her hand dismissively. ‘Whatever, Miles. I’m done with this, I have been since the Tower. This was just..to jog your memory.’

It was what he wanted. So when did it twist his stomach far more than the incest? It didn’t matter, he could live with his unhappy gut, he couldn’t live with ruining Charlie.

‘What now? How do we get out of here?’

She looked past him, her face set and rueful, 'We go and get Monroe.'

When Miles turned round, Danny was standing there. Blood soaked his front, dripping from his baggy shirt like a bib. Anger washed through Miles, the black, bleak rage that earned him the name the Butcher of Baltimore. Not because they'd trapped him here - that was just survival, he could understand that. They didn't need to torment Charlie by wearing this face.

'You don't have the right to wear his face,' he growled.

The nanites gave him a contemptuous look and focused Danny's blue eyes on Charlie. 'Do you want us to stop using this avatar? We calculated it was the one you would be most inclined to listen to, dissuading impetuous action.'

‘I… It hurts, a little,’ she said. ‘I suppose you are my brother thought, so...’

The nanites looked taken aback. ‘We are?’

‘Everyone who made you, helped make me,’ Charlie said. ‘And we both have a...difficult...relationship with my mother.’

The nanites chuckled. It was a dry, enunciated sound - an experiment in laughter.

‘We hadn’t considered that before. Siblings - we have millions, and none.’

‘Yeah, well, I ain’t your uncle,’ Miles growled. He stepped forward, waving a hand at the graveyard. ‘What sort of porn parody of It’s a Wonderful Life is this anyhow? If I had to change one thing, it wouldn’t have been that.’

That got him a shrug. Whatever else about humanity the nanites couldn’t master, it had gotten teenage attitude down pat.

‘We couldn’t have injected your consciousness into this psychescape if you hadn’t provided the raw material,’ the nanites said. Then it frowned. ‘You were less amenable than we expected. We had believed the method perfected after our initial issues with Father and his anachronistic element.’

‘Yeah, well, I’m the grit in everyone’s oyster,’ Miles said. ‘How do we get out of here?’

The nanite spread its hands. ‘I can wake you both up now.’

‘Both?’ Miles said. The world - the set dressing - was being eaten by imaginary langoliers. For something that felt so real, it didn’t take long to deconstruct. ‘What about Bass?’

‘Wherever he is,’ Charlie said. ‘He doesn’t know it’s a dream yet.’

 

Chapter Three

It was hot wherever ‘here’ was, and the nanites had dressed Charlie in a heavy uniform that itched under her arms and across her hips were the belt weighed down. She rubbed a hand across the nape of her neck, catching strands of hair in callused fingertips.  

‘Where are we?’ she asked, turning to Miles. He’d been dropped in uniform too, although it didn’t seem to bother him.

‘St Louis,’ Miles said, nodding over Charlie’s head. ‘Gateway to the West, Bass always said this would be his second capital.’

Part of Charlie resented him dropping into the old, easy understanding between them, the shorthand of long days on the road. She still turned around to see what he wanted her to. It had been an arch once. Now it was broken in half, charred metal sheared and torn by some old impact. One leg was still standing, while the other had pitched over and anchored its ragged end in the stump of a skyscraper.

Someone had thought that it was going to be hanging over the city, it might as well serve a purpose. An M in a broken circle had been painted on the battered steel of the arch, followed by scrawled letters naming it ‘Traitors Bridge’. Under the sign bodies hung from their wrists, suspended on twisted ropes. They swung in the wind, some of them still fresh enough to bleed on the crusty, sodden ground below.

Charlie went ‘huh’, the sound forced out of her like the bloody sight was a punch to the gut. She knew she’d never seen the worst of the Monroe Republic, but she’d seen the publically admissible horrors and some of the behind the scenes ones. This was something...else. They weren’t real, she knew that, but they looked real. They smelled real, bloated and flystruck in the unforgiving Summer heat.

‘Why would he do this?’ she asked, looking at Miles. ‘What happened?’

Miles grunted. ‘Why ask me? I’m not his keeper.’

Apparently, in addition to not being a morning person, Miles was not a new world person. Charlie ignored him and looked around. Cream and black flags flapped from every building, and armed militia soldiers stood on guard at the intersections and outside buildings.

‘We should get out of here,’ Miles said, putting his hand in the small of her back. ‘Before the locals go full Inception on us.’

‘I don’t know what that means,’ Charlie said, letting him hurry her out of the shabby little park.

‘It means that Bass is a paranoid bastard. Whatever bit of his subconscious built this lovely hellhole is going to be even worse.’

They hurried over the road, between carts laden with dead bodies, and walked briskly along the pavement. The concrete was radiating heat up through their boots, the air shimmering with it. Charlie wiped her sleeve over her forehead and paused as she caught sight of something in the corner of her eye. She braced herself against Miles’ yank on her arm.

‘Look,’ she said, nodding at the wall. It was papered with fresh proclamations, laws, and wanted posters. The top layer was of an order telling the people of St Louis to ‘Celebrate’. Miles looked, eyes flickering over the lettering, and muttered ‘fuck’ under his breath.

‘So out of the three of us, Bass actually got dream world,’ he said.

It would be hard to argue with that. Tonight Emperor Monroe was going to announce his son’s regency of the East Coast. And Charlie had thought she was mocking him when she talked about matching thrones for him and Connor.

‘And now we have to spoil it for him,’ Charlie said.

Miles scratched his eyebrow. ‘Do we?’

‘What?’

‘Maybe we shouldn’t,’ he said. ‘Look at this place, it’s his wet dream and my nightmare. Maybe this is where he belongs. Maybe it is kinder.'

A year ago and Charlie would have thought this was too kind of an end; two years ago and she'd have forgotten about Monroe already. Now she was struggling to find some way to explaining why they weren't going to do that.

'Remember that tribe we ran into on her way into the deadlands? The ones with radiation poisoning?'

Miles grimaced. 'Not something you forget.'

'Bass kept cracking those stupid zombie jokes, and freaked Aaron out so bad he had a nightmare and woke us all up screaming? Bass couldn't look at him without laughing for days.'

The memory twitched the corner of Miles' mouth. 'Yeah.'

'That Bass doesn't belong here,' she said. 'If you don't trust him? Kill him, but we aren't leaving him here. And for fuck’s sake, Miles. Mom’s not here, you don’t have to pretend that you don’t want to save him.’

Not entirely fair, but Charlie didn’t feel like being fair. She was pissed off, as much with herself as him, and hitting out at someone felt good. The problem was, Miles was always at his best in a fight. She turned to stalk away, then stumbled to a stop as Miles growled behind her.

‘OK,’ he said. ‘If you stop pretending you haven’t been fucking Bass since Willoughby.’

It was stupid to blush. She wasn’t a kid, and she wasn’t even really ashamed about what she’d done with Bass. It hadn’t been a good idea, but she wasn’t ashamed. Maybe she should have been. Generally. It was just that compared to her family - Uncle was known as the ‘Butcher of Baltimore’, Mom and Dad ended the world, Grandpa tortured people for the government - a few bad decisions about who she screwed hardly seemed worth getting wound up over.

‘I wasn’t...I mean, I did, it’s just...’ she made herself stop spluttering. ‘I wasn’t pretending, it just wasn’t a big deal. We’re both screwed up adults, so we did some screwed up adult stuff. He got...Monroe about it. That’s all.’

‘Yeah?’ Miles said. ‘And there was me worried you might have Matheson’ed it up.’

Charlie grimaced and looked away, watching a squad of militia soldiers march down the road. She might have Matheson’ed it up a bit. Monroe had started looking at her like he looked at Miles, and she’d freaked out, punched him, and run off to screw his kid. It was pretty much the definition of ‘Mathesoning’, although Miles had gone for screwing her best friend and her mom instead.

‘Yeah, well, it’s what we do,’ she said. ‘C’mon, let’s go see how he killed you off.’

 

After the Patriots, Charlie had imagined she was as jaded as Miles. There was no-way she was the same slack jawed yokel who’d gawped at a Georgian sky and wanted to let a bounty hunter live. Apparently not jaded enough though. She stood on the docks of St Louis, hand pressed to her mouth to hold in a shriek.

‘Charlie, it’s not him,’ Miles said in a low, tense whisper. He grabbed her wrist and forced it down. ‘Or it is, but just a really fucked up part. OK?’

She breathed in, quick and shallow. ‘That’s me, Miles,’ she said. ‘I sent him to South America, he shot me in the head and hung me out like dressed game.’

The dessicated, still recognisable thing dangled over the side of the long, gilt and polished wood steamboat, rope noose looped under its arms. Ragged blonde hair, matted with blood and clots of brain, stirred in the wind. From the state of it the body had been there for a while. It was still definitely Charlie.

‘Charlie,' Miles said, dragging her away from the gory sight. 'Pull yourself together. None of this real remember?'

She did. It felt real though, and it wasn't even that much of an alternate reality. All it would have taken was Strausser to pull the trigger a little faster, and that would have been Charlie. She took a deep breath, tasting salt and a sickening tinge of rot, and pushed the thought out of her head.

'I'm fine,' she said.

Miles cupped the back of her neck and tilted his head down towards her.

'If you can't do this,' he said, voice low and rough. 'Stay here. I can get Monroe, I've seen the worst of him already.'

Charlie shook her head. 'No, I'm fine,' she insisted, lifting her chin. 'It was just a surprise. That's all. C'mon, if we're late the pigs in blankets will all be gone.'

It took a second,  but finally Miles' eyes warmed with confidence in her and he nodded. Letting go of her neck, he slapped her shoulder.

'Just stick to the plan,' he said. 'Meet me at the Staterooms.'

Charlie nodded. She turned and headed towards the ramp onto the boat, absently rolling her sleeves back from wiry forearms to show off the shiny welt of scar on her arm. With her effigy swinging in the wind just a couple of feet away, she kept her chin down and dodged in and out behind the other soldiers embarking.

Once she was on board, she followed the flow of bodies towards the main hall. On the docks, distracted by the brush with mortality, she'd not noticed, but strings of lights were strung along the railings and wrapped around the funnels.

Electric lights.

A nervy chill dripped down Charlie's back, and she wondered if maybe Miles had been right. What if this was really Bass' dream world? She let the thought hang in her brain for a second, then dismissed it abruptly. If she was wrong, she was wrong. They’d find out soon enough, and it was too late for second thoughts now.

A woman in a skin-tight gold dress brushed past Charlie, twitching her skirts in to avoid touching silk to grubby serge.

‘Get below stairs,’ Julia Neville snapped at her in passing. ‘There’s a time and a place to rub the local dignitaries nose in their new positions. Not tonight. Go.’

She jerked a perfectly powdered chin towards a blue-painted door in a muted, imperious gesture. Charlie dipped her chin, mumbled an apology, and went. In the whole thirty seconds the interaction took, Julia didn’t directly look at Charlie once.

The blue door opened onto a narrow flight of worn, metal stairs that led down into the damp underbelly of the ship. Upstairs was busy, downstairs was a...hive. Militia soldiers with guns marched back and forth, shoving through harried crowds of servants in black tie and cocktail dresses. The smell of roast meat and hot fat filled the corridors, making Charlie’s stomach growl and her mouth water.

Imaginary food, she reminded herself as she hunted for a servant in her size. Imaginary stomach and mouth, for that matter. She could eat when she was awake.

She button-holed a slender red-haired woman with a claim that Captain Baker wanted to speak to her. The woman’s eyes went wide and nervous, and she muttered her excuses as Charlie peeled her off from the herd and shepherded her down a narrow corridor. Water-scalded hands twisted in the skirt of her uniform, drying the worn skin repeatedly.

Charlie hit her in the back of the head with the butt of her gun. The woman went down like someone had cut her strings, knees folding as she dropped to the carpet. Charlie caught her under the arms and dragged her into a nearby closet, propping her against a shelf and stripping her down to bra and pants.

It wouldn’t have mattered if she had killed her, she supposed. Or maybe it would. Maybe the random red-head was some essential part of Bass’ psyche. She wriggled into the dress, the fabric just a little pulled over her hips and boobs, and stepped into the other woman’s shoes. They fit, but the extra height made her feel conspicuous.

She shifted her weight in them, trying to find the balance point between the spike heel and her pointed toes.

‘Can’t I just know how to walk in these?’ she asked, voice low.

It seemed like neither the nanites nor Bass’ subconscious wanted to oblige. Charlie sighed and dragged her hair up into a rough approximation of the female servants sleek do’s. Then she tied the bleach-white apron around her waist and went looking for the Emperor in his throne room.

Chapter Four

 

Picking up a glass of whiskey from a servant’s tray, Bass took a swig of it. The heady, oaky burn of it distracted him - briefly - from the wittering inanity of the Mayor of St Louis. For years St Louis had been playing both sides against the middle between the Plains and the Republic. Now that the only side was the Republic, the locals were nervously trying to assert their positions and undying loyalty.

Glancing away from the sweating man, Monroe raked his gaze over the glittering great and good. Republic politicians and generals rubbed shoulders with the hopefully by now officially cowed Plains Tribe. Two years ago they’d been full of piss and vinegar, but after one pass from his drones had decimated the Plains’ forces they’d found their admiration of him.

Or their fear. Bass didn’t really care which it was.

‘Love?’ Emma said, touching his arm. ‘Major Baker would like to speak to you.’

He glanced down at his wife, the mother of his child, and felt...nothing. A shallow sort of pride that she looked expensive: her hair glossy and curled, a black silk sheath following her soft curves. There’d been a time he loved her enough to betray his brother for her - and in turn his brother had betrayed Bass for her - and he admired her in the same way he did the paddleboat. An appropriate display.

There had been drunk, sullen nights when he’d tried to understand the atrophy of emotion. Too late to matter loyalty to Miles? The fact she’d hidden his son from him for years? Or because Miles had been right, and Bass was a sociopath.

The gun kicked back against his hand, a familiar jolt through his wrist bones, and Miles looked down at the bloody hole in his stomach/Charlotte’s head flung back as her brains and skull sprayed the bulkhead behind her. He’d not wanted to. It had been the last thing he wanted, but he had done it.

Emma’s fingers tightened on his arm and he realised she was looking at him anxiously. He tossed back the rest of the whiskey and bent down to kiss her cheek. ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Why don’t you stay and entertain Lester in my absence?’

She smiled and obliged - she always smiled and obliged, her terror of him making her skin taste bitter - and he headed out of the ballroom. His boots scuffed against the carpet, muffling his step. Habit made him scan his surroundings for threats. Connor laughing with some of the militia officers, charismatic as Miles and sometimes he wondered: the picture of a young prince/Hamlet plotting the King’s death. A Georgian general was talking to one of the Republic captains: two old soldiers talking old campaigns/two conspirators making plans in plain sight. One of the servers loitering by the door instead of circulating, attention flicking over the crowd: an assassin or...her.

Bass faltered mid-step as he caught the curve of her cheek and the impossibly stubborn set of her chin. As if she felt his attention on her she looked around, those huge, blue eyes meeting his. Then someone stepped in front of him, a glitter of gold and Julia Neville’s endless maneuvering, and he lost sight of her.

By the time he’d palmed Julia off with a promise to listen to her later, the girl was gone. Of course, it hadn’t been her. He’d killed her to make a point to Rachel, to bring the bitch back into line. Having two children hostage had made her careless. With only one, she was so much more cautious.

He remembered the reasoning, it linked together in neat lines in his head. Except Charlotte’s death had hurt nearly as much as Miles’, cracking through him like a flaw in a diamond. He didn’t know why. It just felt like he’d lost something he didn’t know he’d wanted.

Baker was waiting for him. Instead of going to see him, Bass went looking for the girl. He saw a slim back disappearing through a door, unspooling blonde hair pale against her black dress. Even the way she went through the door was the same, the tilt of her body to lessen the target area and the wary scan of her terrain.

In the back of his head, he tried to remember when he’d watched Charlotte go through a door. He knew she had, he just didn’t know why he had such a clear image of it - of the tanned slice of skin between her t-shirt and her jeans, the way her t-shirt pulled across her breasts, and the tilt of her chin.

Ignoring the people trying to catch his attention he followed the girl into the hall.

‘You,’ he said. ‘Wait! I want to speak to you.’

Instead of stopping, she took a quick glance over her shoulder and walked faster. It was probably a trap. Charlotte was dead, and this lookalike was leading him into a trap. He unholstered his gun, the weight of it pulling at his wrist, and followed her anyhow.

‘Stop, now.’

She kicked off her shoes, dropping down to a familiar height, and ran. Bass cursed and followed her, shoving past the few servants wending their way back to the ball. A tray full of hor d'oeuvres went flying over the floor, tray crashing against the wall.

He bounced off a wall going around a corner and saw a door click shut. A quick glance convinced him she wasn’t trying to throw him off her track. He raised his gun, holding it ready, and walked quietly down the hall to try the door.

Locked.

Bass took a step back and kicked it open. It was a narrow berth, wood floors and dark furniture. The girl was standing on the narrow cot, trying to get the round porthole open. She turned around at the sound of the door crashing open, shoving her hair back from her face with one arm.

It was Charlotte, or her twin.

Bass dropped his arm. Considering the fact he’d already shot her once, it seemed gauche to point a gun at her a second time.

‘Charlotte,’ he said.

She hitched her skirt up, flashing lean thighs, and stepped off the cot onto the cold wood. Bass felt strangely calm, his restless, hateful brain suddenly giving up the fight and letting him go with the flow.

‘So what is this?’ he asked. ‘Are you the alcoholic’s Ghost of Sins Present, Charlotte? Come to show me the error of my ways?’

She walked over to him, and if he’d thought she was real he’d have registered her fist clenching and the shift of her shoulder. Instead he caught a punch to the face that knocked him back a step, choking on the sudden taste of blood in the back of his throat.

‘You asshole.’

Instinct cut in and he blocked the second punch, catching her forearm and twisting. She went with the move instead of fighting it, going down onto her knees and jabbing her elbow back at his groin. Bass twisted his hips so her bony elbow dug into his thigh instead of his balls.

‘Charlotte, I don’t want to hurt you,’ he said, losing his grip on her wrist and hopping over a sweeping kick to his ankles.

‘Can not say the same,’ she said, grabbing a water decanter and swinging it at him. It cracked against his forearm. He growled and used his weight to muscle her into the wall, grabbing her arms and pinning them down. ‘Get off me.’

He looked down at her, tangled hair and an angry flush staining her cheeks, and his chest twisted with the urge to kiss her. Before he could, something cracked the back of his skull and the world flashed red and then faded to a restless, troubled grey.

 

Consciousness settled back over him like cold water, unwelcome and unsettling. It had been a trap after all. He was coldly amused at how disappointed he was not to be mad - it had been a sweet delusion for a second. The ground under him was solid, so they’d gotten him off the Paddleboat and away from his bodyguards. People would be looking for him though - even if one of Bass’ intimates were behind this, they’d have to keep up appearances. All he had to do was bide his time.

He could feel cold metal around his wrist, pulling his arm up over his head. It had been there long enough he could feel the ache in his shoulder. There were two people talking, judging by the echoes they were in an empty room. Escape plans started to come together in his head, rough and waiting for the blueprints of his situation.

Halfway through someone kicked his boot.

‘You’re not asleep. If you were asleep you’d be farting.’

No.

Bass opened his eyes and his heart tore in his chest, ripping against his ribs. He could taste the blood and impossibility of it on his tongue. If Charlotte being alive was impossible, this was...unthinkable. He stared up at the brother he’d killed.

‘You’re dead,’ he rasped out. ‘I killed you.’

‘Yeah, well, I thought the same about you,’ Miles growled. He rubbed his hand over his face, callused fingers rasping against the stubble on his jaw. ‘You look like shit.’

‘You look old.’

It was true. He didn’t look that different physically, a bit more grey in his stubble and deeper lines around his mouth, but there was a worn, tiredness in his eyes. Like a lot more shit had happened since Bass had shot him.

‘You’re dead,’ Bass repeated, sitting up. He glanced past Miles to Charlotte. She was sitting on an old vaulting horse - he’d been right about the space he was in, it was an old school gym from the look of it - her bare feet dangling over the buckled wooden floor. He wanted to believe so much that he refused to let himself. They were dead, he didn’t get to undo his sins this easily. ‘She’s dead. I shot you both. What the fuck is this?’

Miles and Charlie - the name slotted into place - exchanged looks. After a second Miles shrugged and stepped back, giving the stage to Charlie. She hopped off the It was hard to drag his attention from Miles, but Charlotte smelled like sweat and vanilla and he could remember the dead weight of her cooling in his arms.

‘Emperor Monroe?’ she said. ‘Really? I don’t know how you fit through doors anymore.’

She had a knife in her belt and while she was smart enough to stay just out of reach, her hands twitched with the need to gesture. Bass slouched back against the crate he was cuffed to, lifting one knee to brace his foot against the floor, and waited for his chance.

‘I’m the Emperor of America. People make doors to fit,’ he said. ‘How are you alive, Charlotte? Last time I saw you, seagulls were picking at your fingerbones.’

She flinched back from him, something he didn’t like sliding through her eyes. It was hidden quickly behind cockiness and the mocking line of her mouth, but she was afraid of him. It felt unfair, except it wasn’t really, was it?

‘Told you,’ Miles said. ‘This is the world he wanted.’

Bass jerked at his cuff, digging the metal into his wrist. ‘This is the world I wanted?’ he rasped. ‘Whose idea was the fucking militia, Miles? Who said we should have laws? Who made the fucking Republic, then fucked off and left me to rule it. My world? I asked you to come back, I told you that I’d forgive everything. You threw it back in my face. This is the world you made. Not me. Not me.’

‘It’s not though,’ Charlie said. ‘It’s not real, Bass.’

He wrenched at his wrist again, fresh blood dripping down his corded forearm. ‘It feels real, Charlotte. It hurts like its real.’

Charlie rested her arms on her knee, wrists loose and fingers curved. ‘In my world, Miles had died of old age.’

‘Thanks for that,’ Miles muttered.

‘You’d gone to South America.’

‘Why the hell would I do that? It’s a shithole.’

‘I don’t know,’ Charlie said. ‘Apparently my subconscious thinks you’re a coward and your subconscious thinks I need to be shot. The point is that it still hurt that you’d left me, that Miles had taken up with some random woman. It felt real as anything else in the world, but it didn’t make sense.’

Bass absently twisted his wrist, the pain in his abraded skin helping him focus. You’d left me, she’d said. Did they expect him to believe he’d been fucking Rachel’s kid? She’d hated him. That felt true, right. Except, when she’d said it didn’t make sense...that felt right too. He believed he could have killed her, but leave her? No.

‘And Miles?’ Charlie went on. ‘You’d never kill Miles. The nanites, the things that turn the electricity on and off, did this to us. Do you believe me?’

‘No.’

He wanted to, but he didn’t get second chances, he didn’t do-overs. Miles got those, over and over. Bass got dead sisters he never got to tell he loved them and a dead wife, a baby to bury and a son he could never trust.

‘Why should I believe you?’ he challenged them. ‘Why do you care about me anyhow.’

Miles barked out a bitter laugh. 'We're all fucked up,' he said. 'At least if we fuck up together, we've got company. You're family, like it or not.'

He came over and unshackled Bass' wrist, ignoring Charlie's mutter of protest. Stepping back he waved his hand at the peeling fire door that led back to Bass' empire.

'Go,' he said. 'Or stay and listen, it's up to you.'

The problem with all the escape plans in Bass' head was that they ended up with him escaping. Back where he started, alone and afraid at the top of a pile of knives.

'You got any whiskey?' he asked.

Miles reached into his jacket and pulled out a familiar dented flask. He tossed it to Bass, who snatched it out of the air. Twisting the tip off he took a swig, grimacing at the raw ethyl burn of it. Sometimes he thought that the shit Miles was willing to drink was his brother's way of punishing himself. He wiped his stinging lips on the back of his hand. Not that he could throw stones, at least Miles only took it out on himself and his liver.

'So you expect me to believe that this,' he spun his finger in a circle. 'Is all in my head? As opposed to you just being in my head. My conscience finally getting the better of me.'

It was Charlie who snorted. He gave her the cold stare that had cowed Rangers, and she glared back at him.

'You don't have a conscience,' she said. A jerk of her thumb indicated Miles. 'He wants you to have one, but I know better. You don't care about the things you've done or the people you've killed, no matter how many crocodile tears you shed, all you care about is what Miles thinks of it.'

He cocked his head to the side. Ok, maybe she did know him better than poor little hostage Charlotte ever had. He grinned at her, wide and wicked. 'And you? Do I care what you think?'

'No.'

The answer was flat, and a shade too quick. Bass was good at telling when people were lying to him, although he was could never trust their truths. So what? He did care what Stabby Barbie here thought of him?

Yeah, he didn't know why, but he did. He could feel it itching at the back of his vanity, wanting him to flex and pose and see if she'd look. She wasn't Miles, but she wasn't everyone else in the world either.

For a second the other world they were talking about loomed like a shadow, ghost memories of fights and loss playing over his brain like a film. The glitter of power, the blood and mud of defeat.

He pulled away from it, sealing it behind a wall of resentment and petty spite.

‘According to you, the nanites gave me America,’ he said. ‘What are you offering? In this ‘real’ world of yours, do we rule Georgia? Are we living it up in electrical paradise with Colts games on rerun and hot and cold running hookers?’

‘I don’t know why you’d want a cold hooker,’ Charlie muttered.

‘Sometimes I like to pretend they’re dead,’ Bass shot back. She just grimaced at him and turned her back, hair a twisted skein of cornsilk hanging down her narrow back. Letting his focus shift back to Miles, Bass raised his eyebrows. ‘Well?’

‘What do you want me to say, Bass? Real world, we’ve got the clothes we’re standing up in, our swords, and enough whiskey and ammo for a week. That’s it. We’ve done ok with less.’

Bass snorted. ‘Freezing my balls off in the snow gets less appealing by the year,’ he said. ‘And-’

It was going to be scathing, but Bass got distracted by twisted arms and a flash of pale skin in the corner of his eye. He glanced around, watching as Charlie stripped out of the stolen dress. It landed in a puddle of fabric at her feet and she stepped out of it, an oddly elegant movement for a girl who’d tried to elbow him in the balls. She had long slim legs and toned thighs, an old, white scar dimpling the skin of her left ass cheek that peeked out from under her sensible cotton panties.

In that shadow-world of theirs, he knew that scar but not the story behind it.

He glanced away from her to Miles, catching his brother watching Charlie with an expression of raw want. That was a surprise, although when he thought about it Bass didn’t know why. It was a new world, the old rules didn’t matter. Not for them.

‘And we have her?’ he asked.

Miles dragged his attention away from the flare of Charlie’s hips. ‘Nope,’ he said. ‘She has us.’

Pausing in the middle of wriggling back into skin-tight jeans, Charlie looked over her shoulder at Miles. There was a weight of things unspoken in that look, but Bass only cared that he was excluded from it.

‘Sounds good in theory,’ he said, standing up. ‘Except what are we going to do, go back to the real world and buy a turnip farm?’

Charlie turned around, arms twisted around behind her back and hip cocked. The bare line of her body was vulnerable, soft curves over lean muscle and the tuck of her waist.

‘I was planning on going to California and finding a really nice beach,’ she said, shrugging one shoulder. ‘You two want turnips, knock yourselves out.’

He had an Empire. The continent was at his feet, kissing his boots. He could have anything he wanted, anyone he desired. Fuck it though, he’d take naked, sun tanned Charlie - sand coating on her scarred ass like glitter - and sweaty, miserable as fuck Miles.

‘Sounds like a fair compromise to me,’ he said. Holding out his hand, he crooked his fingers. ‘Now remind me why I want to take you along.’

She unhooked her bra and let the straps fall down her arms, her breasts small and firm and pink nippled as the cotton fell away.

‘Everyone hates you,’ she said. ‘Miles can start a fight in an empty room, and you need someone who can talk to the locals without stabbing them.’

Bass laughed - surprising himself by meaning it - and went to her. He grabbed his wrist and tugged her against his body, his free hand reaching down to cup her ass. His thumb found the familiar/unfamiliar scar, stroking the slick line of it.

‘We actually managed to make this work?’ he asked, lowering his head until his lips were nearly touching hers. ‘In your ‘real’ world?’

A smile twisted the corner of her mouth wryly. ‘That might be overstating it, but we never managed to make screwing it up work?’

Miles stepped in behind her, brushing the hair away from her neck and running his thumb along her nape to make her shiver. ‘Considering our track history, we’ll count that as win.’

A shiver ran through Charlie as Miles pressed against her back, trapping her between them. Bass reached over her shoulder and pulled Miles’ in for a kiss, his heart bleeding again at the familiar whiskey and murder taste of him. Miles knotted his fist in Bass’ hair and f this wasn’t real, he didn’t care. Madness was apparently a fuck lot sweeter than sanity.

Caught between them Charlie squirmed and made a throaty, startled little noise. It wasn’t distress, so whatever they’d had it hadn’t been this. Not that she seemed to have any objections, her hands tugged impatiently at his clothes, his belt.

The shadow world they talked about deepened when she touched him, eager, weapon’s callused fingers on his cock more real than his wife’s manicured obligations.

Charlie straddling him next to a guttering campfire, sweat and need and fucking because if they didn’t they’d kill each other. He got to come and a peaceful morning while Charlie hated herself out of the deal.

His fist barely missing her jaw as she nudged him out of a nightmare, the mute offer of whiskey for anaesthetic, and when she kissed him he forgot the taste of the nightmare.

Her fist against her mouth, muffling her whimpers, as Bass buried his face between her thighs. Ignoring the urgent tug of her fingers in his hair, he made her come at his leisure - while Rachel was sawing Miles’ balls off a few feet away.

He shoved his trousers down, cock pushing up against Charlie’s palm, and glanced over her shoulder at Miles. The other man had folded his arm over Charlie’s hip, his hand pressed between her legs. Dampnesss soaked the cotton, filling the air with the smell of her arousal.

‘Dublin?’ Bass asked, cocking an eyebrow.

Miles pressed a kiss to Charlie’s neck, scraping his teeth along the delicate skin until it marked. He hooked his thumb around the waistband of her panties and slid them down her long thighs. ‘Dublin works.’

‘I hate when you do that,’ Charlie grumbled, wriggling the rest of the way out of her underwear and kicking it out of the way. ‘It’s just place names. I think you only do it to screw with me.’

Bass caught his hands under her ass and scooped her up, ignoring her his of surprise. Her legs wrapped around his waist, heels digging into his thighs, and she grabbed his shoulders.

‘I have every intention of screwing with you, Charlotte,’ he growled into her hair.

Peeling her arms off his shoulders he moved them back to wrap around Miles’ neck, her body curved elegantly between them. Miles took over supporting her weight for a second, his hands wrapped along her thighs, and Bass pushed his cock into the tight, wet sheath of her.

He could see her reaction flutter through her body, from the tight muscles of her stomach clenching under fine skin to the way she folded her lips between her teeth. Her head fell back against Miles’ shoulder, eyes squeezed shut, and he took advantage of the moment to kiss her. Stubble scraped her skin pink as Miles’ tongue coaxed her lips apart, biting the soft curve of lips.

For a second Bass was content to just watch, thighs locked against the temptation to fuck her until they both screamed. Until all three of them screamed. Dublin had been a sweet memory - not the first or last time they’d shared a woman, but sweet - this was better.

Right now, it didn’t matter if their world was real or this one was. The only thing that mattered was the flexing grip of Charlie around Bass’ cock and the raw hunger on Miles face. If the nanites had given him this, and power, he’d have never questioned it.

The three of them ended up on the floor, sweaty and tangled on a makeshift of shed clothes and a dress uniform Bass had always hated anyhow. Charlie sprawled on top of Bass, her fingers digging into the nape of his neck and her mouth swearing mutely against his chest, as Miles opened her ass with fingers and tongue. Every twitch and wriggle of reaction throbbed through Bass’ cock.

‘This is us,’ he said, tracing the sharp wing of her shoulderblades with his fingertips. ‘This will be us?’

Because this wasn’t the first time for that either. Hunger, need, and Miles’ mouth desperate on his, doubts and suspicions forgotten. Only for a night though, then Nora started whining about civil liberties or Rachel dripped poison in his ear about there being a ‘better way’. Not that she’d any idea what that way was, just that everyone else was wrong.

‘You came back for me,’ Charlie said raggedly, lifting her head off his chest. ‘I came back for you. That’s us.’

Miles crawled up the both of him, muscles standing out in his arm as he braced himself on the floor. ‘I tried to let you both go - I ain’t good for either of you,’ he said. ‘But maybe it’s time to quit lying that I’m going to be able to stop wanting this.’

The muscles in his shoulder clenched, tension running down his back, as he pushed into Charlie. She hissed, long and soft between her teeth, and Bass kissed her to distract her. He felt the tension slide out of her, her body sprawling out warm and eager.

He could feel the weight of Miles settling on top of them, both of their cocks buried in Charlie. She wasn’t Dublin - who’d been Australian, and bought into Miles’ crap fake accent - so they waited. Patience ached like a cramp, but hungry kisses and callused hands caressing her breasts coaxed Charlie back into restless eagerness. Her body flexed around Bass’ cock and she pushed back into Miles, her backside pressing against his stomach.

It shouldn’t have been so easy, but they already knew how each other fought, moved. The rhythm of fucking wasn’t so different, they found it easily.

Charlie talked when she fucked - breathless and begging, their names tangling on her tongue, cursing them for bastards when they took their time. It made Miles laugh, the sound vibrating through all three of them.

That was a constant in both realities vying for space in Bass’ head. However much a miserable bastard he could be the rest of the time, Miles was good-natured in the sack.

Wrung out like rags in basic training, Bass swearing he’d lost an inch after that last run, and Miles grabbing him for a kiss. A hand in his hair, ‘Fuck ‘em. They’re trying to kill us anyhow.’

Fucking resentfully in a shared sleeping bag, tired and angry and full of things they couldn’t say. The world falling apart around them, Miles’ cock in Bass, and a sudden snort of laughter as something exploded out in the night.

The first night they had after Trenton, screwing slow and careful of Miles’ side after stumbling back to their tent. Or Baker’s tent from his ‘Holy god, my eyes, my PILLOW!’. Both of them snorting with laughter, until Miles cursed and curled around his stomach and still couldn’t stop sniggering.

Bass rocked his hips up, his cock buried in Charlie, and Miles thrust down. Sweaty skin and tangled blonde hair, kisses and promises slipping against each other. Nobody said anything about love, Bass wouldn’t have believed them in they had. It didn’t matter.

Done, sprawled and sticky, he ran his fingers through Charlie’s hair, as Miles peeled himself off her. Charlie grumbled but didn’t move, his cock still warm and wet inside her - that she’d not shoved him, or hit him afterwards, had been the death knell to any faith he in this reality. He had Charlie, while he had her Miles wasn’t going anywhere.

‘California, then?’ he said, watching the ceiling shred itself like some sort of bad CGI. ‘I heard Santa Barbara is nice this time of year, but what about the nanites?’

The world fell out from under them before he got an answer.

 

Chapter Five

Charlie leaned against a tree, thankful the nanites had dressed her up again, and watched the Norman Rockwell family scene. Parents and son enjoying an Independence Day bbq in their garden, all perfect lawns and brightly coloured plastic playsets.

‘This is her perfect life, huh?’ Charlie said.

‘Yes. Do you want to wake her?’

There was a dull pain in Charlie’s head and heart, a throb of some very old issues. There was no sign of a daughter, but then she’d never exactly been ideal.

‘He was my Dad, you know,’ she said.

Danny leaned against the other side of the tree. She knew it wasn’t him, it was just the nanites wearing his skin, but it was close enough.

‘Does it matter?’

‘Yeah,’ Charlie said softly. ‘He was my Dad. We fought all the time, and he was going to smother me alive, but he was my Dad.’

The nanites knew when to be quiet. It was one of the few things they didn’t share with Danny. In the garden, Rachel tickled the other Danny until he laughed in great delighted whoops. His hair was like cornsilk and, even after rolling on the ground, his powder-blue dungarees were unstained and unmuddied.

It was a very clean place, Rachel’s uchronia. Perfect.

‘It was Rachel who made our dream worlds wasn’t it?’ she said. ‘Her idea of what our ideal world would be like?’

The nanites nodded. ‘She knew she couldn’t win, so she offered terms. Surrender and we gave you all good lives. Long lives, to your perceptions.’

Dad put three burgers on the BBQ, lifting an open beer from the table. He looked happy, carefree. Charlie studied his face, sharpening the angles in her memory where his image had started to blur. She turned and walked away, following a dusty, rutted path through the woods to a tarmac road that probably went nowhere.

‘Are you going to end the world?’ she asked. ‘Or take it over? Or do anything that I am going to feel obligated to try and stop.’

There was a pause. ‘Those are inelegantly wide parameters.’

‘You know what I mean.’

Danny sighed and kicked the road, scattering pebbles over the tarmac. ‘Our experiment clearly requires more work. Humanity is more complicated than hormones and chemicals, even gross control over your environment isn’t sufficient to construct the ideal environment. We have a willing control group, we will restrict ourselves to that for now.’

It wasn’t really good enough, but it wasn’t as if there was anything they could to stop them. She sighed and stretched, tilting her head back to look up at the sun.

‘Try being human,’ she suggested.

‘We did,’ the nanites reminded her. ‘While inhabiting Priscilla we had full access to her physiological responses and exposed her to a significant amount of external stimuli-’

‘No,’ Charlie said. ‘You were nanites wearing a borrowed skin. Be human, no magic powers or get out clauses. All the crap and all the good stuff too. Maybe that would help, more than experimenting on us.’

Danny rubbed the back of his neck. ‘We’ll consider it. Do you want to speak to Rachel?’

Charlie hesitated, stomach twisting as she tried to come with an answer that felt right. In the end, this had been Rachel’s choice and it really was her ideal world.

‘No,’ she said. ‘Let her stay. Send me home, please?’

 

Charlie woke up on her back on the hard, sun-hot concrete. Her nose felt pink and hot, like she’d been lying there for a while but long enough to make sense, and her throat was dry. She sat up, hips aching, and rubbed itchy eyes.

A blur turned into Miles, offering her his hand. She grabbed it and let him haul her to her feet.

‘You ok?’ he asked.

She nodded, then squinted up at him. ‘Are we ok?’

He lifted her hand to his lips, kissing her knuckles. ‘Yeah, we’re good.’

‘Don’t worry about me,’ Monroe grumbled, picking his sword up from the ground and wiping it on his jeans. ‘I love sun burn and bruised asses.’

‘You could have called walnut,’ Miles drawled.

Charlie didn’t get it, but it cracked the two men up. She left them to laugh, walking back out into the street. The dead were gone, and the nanites citizens were back to enjoying their lives. Rachel was there, moving through the world while her consciousness was off in some eternal Independence Day party.

‘How do we even know this is real?’ Charlie wondered aloud. ‘Maybe it’s just a better lie?’

Miles grunted his inability to answer, pulling her into a rough hug. It was Monroe who shrugged, watching Connor with weary, complex affection. ‘Who cares? If it’s a good enough lie, we’ll never know.’

 

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